Sputtering Startups Weigh on U.S. Economic Growth - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/sputtering-startups-weigh-on-u-s-economic-growth-1477235874 <comment><USER2> Go on your state's Obamacare exchange. Hypothetically you are a mid 30s individual with a spouse and two young children. Look up 2017 numbers. You are looking at $12,000 - $24,000 per year in premiums alone and then massive deductibles and coinsurance of 30% to actually access services.

Who can bootstrap a business like this? So people are staying with their powerful big corporations if they can't get millions in funding for a startup (and outside of tech this is simply not even a consideration).

Edit: and if at some point you hire an employee, you will need / want to provide them with health insurance, and it will cost just as much. Large corporations have an advantage in that they negotiate lower premiums in bulk. Add this as yet another barrier to entry, along with their lobbying for protectionism, tax loopholes, their ability to hire huge teams of tax lawyers and accountants, and if you really start to get their attention, they can sue you baselessly by throwing lawyers at you to keep you in court. Merely defending yourself and getting to the point of dismissal is unaffordable for a budding small business.

Take a look at S&P500's profit margins. They are at record highs and not coming down as economics teaches us, meaning new entrants are not coming into the market.

<comment><USER3> It was worse before Obamacare. If you had a common prexisting condition such as high cholesterol or high blood pressure you probably could not get health insurance at all on the individual market.

It's a problem with "Health Insurance in the US" as opposed to Obamacare.

<comment><USER4> The worst part of Obamacare for me is the individual mandate. It essentially raises taxes on working class people or forces them to buy a high deductible plan that is of little use to them. The poor get a subsidy and the wealthy need not worry about preexisting conditions. The working class just gets screwed.

<comment><USER5> It's necessary given that the ACA restricts insurers for rejecting people for preexisting conditions. This only really works in a country where everyone has insurance. Otherwise, why not just hang around without insurance until you get really sick, then purchase insurance at that point? If this happens, it drastically distorts the insurance market and makes insurance even more affordable, because people who have insurance will be disproportionately sick.

It may seem like a tax on working people, but really, it is a payment for a very real benefit: a dramatic change in your personal healthcare risk. When you can purchase health insurance at any time even when you're unhealthy, you are essentially being granted an insurance policy for expensive, chronic conditions without even having to purchase anything.

<comment><USER6> You can't simply purchase Insurance and be covered next day. Insurance companies can have a waiting period of up to 3 months before providing you with benefits. It's not really a good idea to wait around with cancer for 3 months until you get your treatment covered

<comment><USER7> The ACA actually makes it very easy to purchase insurance only when you need it (you've moved, your employer drops your coverage), and drop it when you don't (you can go two months per year without insurance without penalty). This is a fundamental flaw in the program.

You must mandate participation through payroll taxes, but also ensure services can be affordably provided to participants. Insurance companies are still raking 20% off total premiums paid; that's money that could go directly into providing care.

<comment><USER4> Keep in mind that 20% is after executive salaries and bonuses as well, at best you are getting 75 cents on the dollar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a physician, I am blown away by the fact that almost no one is talking about the true problem: American health care is artificially hyper-inflated, expense-wise.

Sooooo much waste. Sooooo much inefficiency. The problem is the cost is too high! So why, oh why oh why, is NO ONE TALKING ABOUT FIXING THE ARTIFICIALLY HIGH PRICES?

Because those who make money off the system are controlling the narrative. They are more than happy to have the population "empowered" by increasing insurance coverage. More money for them. More reason and excuse to increase the costs even further.

There is zero reason why a doctor's visit can't cost $100. Maybe less. Break something and need a few x-rays? $100 each, max, including development and reading costs, everything. Need an appendix or tonsils removed? $500 would cover pretty much everything. Sure, such things aren't cheap, but they're survivable. But as soon as we somehow decided we needed "insurance" for such routine expenses, the costs shot up and never looked back. The actual consumers of health care never see the price tag, and - surprise, surprise - the costs have no real reason to stay held back. The systems have no incentive to stay efficient and accountable.

<comment><USER9> How do you propose we start to tackle the problem?

I'm no stranger to the issue, having worked many years in the same dirty industry as you, but on pharmacy benefits side.

It's not just one particular group getting rich in this sector; healthcare is a giant gravy train for everybody: you, me, insurance companies, pharmacists, hospital systems, drug makers, diagnostic tool makers, dme makers. Everybody is getting rich. Where do you even start?

<comment><USER8> Massive education of the consumer is where I think the weak point is.

Every aspect of our society minimizes or ignores the fact that our bodies need occasional attention. The public at large needs to be told the reality that _maintenance_ is incredibly important. Getting teeth cleaned every 6-12 months, getting a colonoscopy at age 50 and every decade thereafter, getting your eyes examined every year or two - these should be seen as routine and just as expected as needing to mow your lawn or buy another gallon of milk. The idea that we don't need to budget for such things and just rely on "insurance" is asinine.

I encourage everyone I know to budget and save for predicable expenses, have savings, and only use insurance for catastrophic coverage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > One key factor intertwined with this loss of dynamism: The U.S. is creating > startup businesses at historically low rates.

This is one of the outcomes of oligopoly, and a system that encourages oligopoly (see: "legal" tax evasion[0]).

Google and Amazon, in particular, have their tendrils extended to many more areas in tech than Search, Affiliate Marketing, good Hardware, and selling products at cheap prices and highly developed operation systems.

In fact, one of this year's most successful tech IPO, Twilio, put the disclosure on their filing that their entire business is toast if AWS begins offering a VoIP / SMS delivery service and start undercutting their costs.

[0] [https://thestack.com/world/2016/05/03/the-tech-giants- invent...](https://thestack.com/world/2016/05/03/the-tech-giants-inventing- their-own-tax-regimes/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Walmart and Amazon alone sell $600bn worth of goods. That's 4% of US GDP. These two pushed thousands of independent retailers out of business due to lower prices (and smaller profit margins relative to revenue).

The same happens in transportation, restaurant business, hotel industry. Firms get bigger since 1800. Naturally, the number of new firms decline. In govt stats, it appears as "fewer startups."

Meanwhile, the economy grows thanks to productivity gains in big companies. So what do we want: productivity or new small businesses?

<comment><USER12> I want a new economical system besides crony capitalism. Time to start thinking outside the box.

<comment><USER6> I feel like more aggressive anti-trust action that breaks up huge companies and reduces barriers to entry and we cang et back to the lean, competitive capitalism that leads to growth and innovation

<comment><USER13> Breaking up big companies is just the first step and relatively a minor one compared to the many barriers to competing with large incumbent firms. Industries with oligopolies where a more aggressive anti-monopoly policy would makes sense are almost always heavily regulated and in bed with the US gov. So that would only be the starting point if you expect them to continue to exist and not just get acquired.

This is more of a problem for medium companies wishing to not get acquired, not so much a roadblock from small firms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's just an editorialized presentation of the following:

[http://www.bls.gov/bdm/entrepreneurship/entrepreneurship.htm](http://www.bls.gov/bdm/entrepreneurship/entrepreneurship.htm)

</comment><comment><USER15> > Goldman Sachs economists in part blame the cumulative effect of regulations > enacted since the Great Recession for reducing the availability of credit > and raising the cost of doing business for small firms.

Huh? Haven't small firms pretty much always been funded by personal saving of the founders, sweetheart loans from friends and family, and perhaps the odd bank loan secured by the personal assets (read: homes) of the founders?

Banks aren't interested in lending directly to businesses until they are large enough to have concrete assets to secure the loans. And they never were.

<comment><USER16> I found this statement amusing too. Somehow, regulations enacted in the 40's took over 60 years to impact the industry? Seriously? The 80's and 90's, under the same regulations, where able to ignore those regulations and have tremendous growth and positive effect on the economy. Sounds like an economist who doesn't actually know what is going on so he's making shit up.

<comment><USER17> Great Recession, not Great Depression

<comment><USER18> that would be 2008, but the graphs start in 1977

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Health insurance and direct regulation is a distraction.

The macroeconomic environment where everything relentlessly consolidates is the problem. For software, entire categories are either dependent in advertising and not long term viable or are scoped from a revenue point of view from bundled offerings by Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Salesforce, etc.

Every other business is the same way. My neighbors dry cleaning business was forced to use a centralized plant because they just couldn't compete with the scale of the local big consolidated industrial cleaners.

</comment><comment><USER20> A coworker at one of my jobs (I work 4 menial job / gigs, make 17k a year, live in parents basement, have no friends or lover, was top of my class in CS but left after a professor openly helped a student cheat to no consequences and another prof revealed CS grads from my school had less than a 50% postgraduation employment rate for ANY job, much less a CS one) had an idea she wanted to patent that would be helpful but would essentially be a metal pole in a specific shape. I had to be a downer and tell her of this story: [http://qz.com/771727/chinas-factories-in-shenzhen-can- copy-p...](http://qz.com/771727/chinas-factories-in-shenzhen-can-copy- products-at-breakneck-speed-and-its-time-for-the-rest-of-the-world-to-get- over-it/)

You're damned if you put your idea on the net and damned if you don't and it's all getting disheartening. I just want to find a career so I can go out and court someone but even the people with CS jobs that I know are constantly complaining of work / life imbalance and not getting to see their loved ones in person enough. Everytime I try to start studying some topic in the hopes of pursuing a living the shellshock of robophobia and the likelihood I will be too late overwhelms me. I can only cry at that leaked Clinton speech where she says we know what to do with the 120 IQ kids, but not the 100 or 80 kids. Well here I am at 145 mopping floors and literally shoveling shit despite only ever being excellent in school I guess it's just bad genes because my uncle could solve a Rubik's cube blind and built all sorts of electrical contraptions and has been a homeless drunk for decades. Here I am, another sandwich eater in front of thw trash pile as in Godard's weekend.

<comment><USER21> So you left school because one professor didn't have good morals? I mean... just because you have a high IQ doesn't mean you make the right decisions. In fact its a lot easier to fool yourself.

<comment><USER20> If the administration had responded to the complaints, I would have felt more hopeful. But instead it reinforced all the complaints of graduates who were saying they can't get a CS interview with their BS because of the grade inflation at the school. I was at this school because it is the only one I can afford without loans. So I stopped just short of the CS degree thinking maybe I will transfer to a school that might be able to help students get something in return for their degree, and maybe get a Ph.D. So if I become less depressed about our societal trajectory that is something I may end up doing. But today I am depressed and feel closer to ending up homeless because I got burnt out before getting a job. So today I think about maybe wandering homeless or seeing if there is still some job I could do that doesn't give me the feeling of absolute abjection that interviews do. At least I'm not Sufiah Yusof although maybe I would be if my parents had been more organized. I was successful in school mostly due to terror of my parents but now they feel bad about how they raised me and they don't push me at all. I keep hoping that some positive form of motivation will emerge for me but whenever I feel good about an idea, I feel awful about it the next day. I never know who I'm going to be tomorrow, or in the morning who I'll be tonight. I hoped university would be very demanding but they've been less so than my HS was. It's not like I'm more moral than that lecturer, I have no follow-through on anything and being on the debate team in particular turned me into a wandering sophist. So I agree.

<comment><USER22> Dude, go back and finish your degree.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, well, that would require getting letters of recommendation from people upset that I left. Also, when I left grad school the people that stuck with it and took on all the debt couldn't find jobs. And they could afford to live in CA where there still are a few relevant jobs, possibly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As a CS student interested in tech and entrepreneurship, I and so many of my peers won't be able to start our own ventures because of student loans. And by the time i've paid off my loans I'll probably have other responsibilities I'll need to take care of.

</comment><comment><USER24> So while startup hype is at an all time high, the actual level of startups is at an all time low in the US.

Reminds me of something Terry Gilliam said... "Usually you spot how societies work by what they glorify: it's usually the thing they're deficient in."

</comment><comment><USER25> The article is absurd and not even supported by its own data!

The fact is startups and small businesses have always been a small fraction of the economy both by employment and contribution to GDP. When I say "always" I actually mean the modern economy of the last 75 years at least. I was very surprised when I learned this but the data go back at least to the end of WWII, which is far back as I looked. Pre-depression there was still a lot of small / disorganized (unincorporated) business and a lot of agricultural employment.

The large companies are the large employers; next are "small businesses" which are franchises (e.g. a lot of people are employed selling MacDonalds hamburgers who aren't technically employees of the MacDonalds company).

There article even points out that new businesses account for only a tiny percentage of jobs; they compare company creation to the 1980s but don't account for company failure. And how many of those companies grew significantly? The vast majority of operating companies formed in the US, and I suspect most countries, are small businesses (shops, restaurants etc).

<comment><USER18> > The vast majority of operating companies formed in the US, and I suspect > most countries, are small businesses (shops, restaurants etc)

My understanding is most of these are retail (think mom-and-pop shops), construction, and professional services (think solo-practicing doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc).

The fact that I can join Google instead of incorporating Muzz's Software Consulting Services should be a _good_ thing, not a bad thing.

<comment><USER25> I am not sure I understand your comment. The article claimed that the change in the number of startups had a materially bad impact on the economy. I claim that small business and startups, collectively, have only a small impact on the economy -- and that the article's data didn't support its conjecture.

Of course Google, Apple, GE, Exxon (Standard Oil) and Boeing were all startups at some point, so without startups you don't have an economy, but the breakout in terms of affecting employment is in the large companies. So yes, google hiring is good for you and is believed by many to be good for the economy in general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This article was written under the assumption that startups in general = innovation.

<comment><USER27> That is generally true.

BigCo has billions in profit from existing products. They can't task big risks. What big innovations have the BigCos done in the last X years?

Startups do crazy stuff. Many fail. Some succeed. End result: Innovation

<comment><USER28> Wait. Why can't they take big risks?

They're in a better position to take big bets than anyone else - Google X, Microsoft Research, Facebook's FAIR and others. If they have the right people in house (or can get them), they can take big swings.

<comment><USER29> Public companies often can't take big risks because they have to justify them to their shareholders and consistently meet expectations. The examples you've listed are all just R&D projects, the expense of which are a tiny line item in the budgets of the companies.

Conversely, a startup has nothing to lose. Early-stage investors know they're taking a moonshot, and they expect only a few of their bets to succeed, so they will encourage the team to swing hard. That's how startups can disrupt established markets with big players: they have less to lose, and don't need to earn buy-in of a large existing company. They can build what they need as they go.

This is also why most acquisitions fail. The team of the acquired company can have difficulty navigating the existing company culture. Often, they're tasked with being a "change agent" only to be identified as a threat by the acquiring company's "immune system" (its existing power structure).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The percent of the US economy invested in startups is very low, so I disagree with the premise of this headline. If every startup went bankrupt tomorrow, what would that represent in GDP decline? If the US GDP is 18 trillion and the total VC investment in 2015 was around 58 billion, then if only last year's investments all went to zero, it would represent a decline in .3% of US GDP. Of course there is more capital at risk than just last year's investment so let's say last year's 58 billion is only 10% of total capital deployed. OK still just a 3% decline. I think what the article should highlight is how few high growth and cash flow positive startups there are, which I agree is a real problem. Maybe completely eliminate all fees and taxes for LLC formation?

<comment><USER31> Stripe folks are working on a product called Atlas(I think thats the name) that supposed to make the LLC formation much easier. Bless them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> So many tech firms these days seem to satisfy some tiny facet of a group's demands to have/do stuff. The bigger the group's economic footprint the more the opportunity for business. But it seems to rely on "hierarchies" of social, economic status. But, basically if you have money you can avail a vast majority of today's tech firm's "products".

Sad part is that as far as I could read economies promoting this kind of behavior are the only ones doing well, yet even here(in the US) it seems things have worked out at best "average" for a vast majority of people. The ones that actually tried to do better for everyone failed spectacularly(read collectivism and socialism).

I always wondered why truly bettering ones self in every way(health, furthering ones own knowledge, exploration, helping others) are goals available only to the select few and not made available to more people more easily? Why are economic efforts geared towards these dwarf in front of more consumerist ones? Why do economics and behavior align in a way that makes it impossible to do better than a narrow predefined narrative someone set for me(or go through immense pain to achieve the one I want)? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilY4hRgfC2Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilY4hRgfC2Q) For example, I was looking at the simple task of affording a house with wife and kids and the only narrative available to have all this are "Zipcode", "School Districts" and "Zoning laws" which puts me in debt for life to get a decent thing choice for those options.

Why do smaller economies seem to do better than larger ones(like in europe). It always seems to me that the bigger the group of people that try to align towards a common goal(be it insurance premiums or world peace) the harder it becomes. Why is this so?

And yet, in the end, by and far large my experience of living in 3 vastly varied countries in the last 20 or so years still makes US a better place to be. But things could be a bit easier/simple [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJRcDHKrSqw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJRcDHKrSqw)

<comment><USER32> I'm interested in your resources but I don't want to make the time investment of watching the Youtube videos you linked. Can you give a short synopsis of them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Consider also how much of payroll goes directly through you or your employee to rent or mortgage in the areas where software talent lives and you can see why the bootstrapping startups that caused the the tech revolution in the first place are infidelity harder now.

You must either bear the productivity hit of a pure virtual workplace or you must comply to the nearly arbitrary success formulas of VCs.

</comment><comment><USER34> Did anyone else read "sputtering startups" and think physical vapour deposition?

</comment><comment><USER35> I wonder how much (if any) the lax enforcement of anti-trust law has played into this.

<comment><USER36> That, plus patents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> So I think this the article perfectly sums up a thesis I have developed about these economics indicators and the way Economic Growth & Productivity is measured.

All of this is intuitive, and I have no hard data to back up my theory, so I would love for someone with much more econometric experience than I to prove/disprove this thesis.

Thesis: The global economy and US economy in particular is going through a radical productivity growth spurt and shift that is not currently being measured properly.

This article is the perfect example of this. You mean to tell me that during a period where there has been an explosion of independent contractors of many different types, we have seen "Startups Weighing on US Economic Growth"? Surely that can't be true and fully reflective of the reality.

There are two aspects to this. There is direct job growth within startups (so Employee headcount) and there is the issue of what is a 'new company'.

Direct Job Growth.

It is hard to argue that the average startup isn't much more productive today than it was 10 years ago, much less 20 years ago. Particularly tech startups. For tech startups it's most glaring, because you have things like AWS, Heroku & the App Stores that allow you to deploy a relatively easily scalable, product that can reach hundreds of thousands/millions of users/customers as a team of 1 - 5.

No longer do you NEED someone just to manage 1 server, or even add additional server capacity and deal with Colocation-related issues and all of that stuff.

You also no longer need to pay huge licensing fees for development software platforms and developer tools. So the barrier to entry to shipping has dropped to 0, basically.

So whenever a startup raises a nominal amount of money, it can go into much more high-value jobs (like customer acquisition and customer support) for which there isn't always a direct correlation between each incremental dollar in revenue earned with the number of people you hire to support that revenue. In some cases there is, but in many cases there isn't. Or rather, the up scale hiring process is horizontal rather than vertical. Each customer support specialist can handle more support tickets today than they used to 20 years ago, for much cheaper. Aka, the support systems that multi-national companies have always used are now available for much cheaper and often much better to startups at $50/employee in many cases.

When you think about the various aspects within a growing tech startup, you can see this same principle across all disciplines (even including HR and Employee benefits via services like Zenefits and its competitors). So the productivity that can be bought with each marginal dollar invested in a nascent startup is so much greater as a result of these highly, specialized and in many cases very economical services that can be leveraged from third- party providers, than had been the case 20 years ago....yet these articles and current econometric models would have us believe that productivity growth has flatlined. Really?

What is a 'new company'?

While there may be significantly less direct job-growth (as a result of the issues I highlighted above), there has been an explosion in the number (and types) of marketplaces that have sprung up that allow customers/users to be independent contractors. Not just typical web dev/writing/etc. But your excess space (AirBnB and all its clones), your excess vehicle (Uber, Lyft and all clones and derivatives), your excess time (Instacart, TaskRabbit, Mechanical Turk, etc.), and any other service that has sprung up that allows random people to do random gigs from a marketplace of gigs of different kinds.

So yes, the Ubers of the world no longer add significant employees to their payroll to service increasing revenue as a part of operations, but by creating marketplaces where random people can earn a living, doing things they previously never did (or even considered doing), surely has contributed significantly to economic growth in ways that aren't currently being measured properly.

Those people likely haven't registered legal entities, they probably just have a bank account, so they won't show up in "new company" data. But I bet if there was a way to measure those non-registered, independent contractors across all of these problems and you contrast that figure with the same category 20 years ago, you would get a much different picture of the US economy and productivity growth.

I could be wrong with all of this, but every time I read one of these articles....that's what jumps out at me. The disconnect between what is being measured and reported in articles like these, and all the products/services we see being launched on TechCrunch, Product Hunt and HN that significantly improve the average person's earning power by both being able to sell said product/service or sign up to be a participant in that marketplace, has always been jarring.

Let me know if this makes sense to anyone and if I am missing anything.

I would love to crystalize this thesis and ideas some more, to do a full write-up in a blog post so please poke as many holes in this as you can.

Thanks!

<comment><USER38> Software produces very little concrete benefit. It is largely used in derivative industries like marketing and finance in order to gain advantage over competitors. The only software that will result in general productivity gains is in control systems. Advancements in those are slower than they've ever been, simply because the low and medium hanging fruit has been picked, and we're down to a dependency on artificial intelligence methods to squeeze out more value. There's no particular reason that AI would be easier now than 60 years ago other than that transistors are infinitesimal and cheap and that data storage in massively dense and cheap, hence big data and an obsession with storing everything possible (which with no basis is presumed to have effective AI as some sort of emergent effect.) It has thus far not been very productive either.

Productivity is dropping because we can't just ride on the improvements in transistors any more. We are going to have to figure out ways to arrange society that will allow us to maintain output while reducing the drain on resources of the financial and marketing sectors themselves. They've become so massive that squeezing them could provide productivity gains for decades.

The only way that Ubers are more productive than taxis is due to the economies of scale created by monopoly. A person working multiple jobs through multiple marketplaces is far less efficient that someone working one job. If the metaphor is a multitasking operating system, you're disregarding the overhead of context switching. We're in a nadir of productivity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Collapse is near.

<comment><USER40> I don't understand why this sentiment is gaining so much traction lately. I'm not claiming to understand the complex world of economics, but I do recognize great inventions - and our world is full of them.

ML is the one I'm most excited about at the moment.

<comment><USER41> A few reasons:

1\. We are currently inside the second longest bull market in US history. Markets are cyclical. We are far more likely to be toward the end of the bull market than the beginning.

2\. Interest rates have begun to normalize, albeit very slowly.

3\. Source rock fracturing and enhanced oil recovery has bought us another 20 years of bumpy plateau. We are squandering this by employing civilization's best minds building Tinder, Uber, Snapchat, etc. The last "great inventions" were the microprocessor and the lithium polymer battery. Every disruption in the last forty years has been variations of ever more hedonistic consumerist enablement, while the clock continues to tick on future energy supply.

<comment><USER42> The reason investors are not interested in funding enterprise software (which usually increases productivity, and eventually standards of living) is that big companies have not been interested in optimizing their operations for many years now, because:

\- business is good due to lowered competition (market consolidation)

\- cheap/free debt can be used for various forms of financial engineering (stock buybacks, etc), making EPS look good</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Was It Appropriate? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/03/22/was-it-appropriate-for-adria-richards-to-tweet-a-photo-of-two-men-at-pycon-and-accuse-them-of-being-sexist/

<comment><USER2> This lawyer's approach to this is pretty enlightening and distills the issues down to their core without being caught up with various sexist biases.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. With new technologies like google glass, public shaming will become a more serious issue. I guess everyone says something childish or stupid between friends, so we should be scared all time of people around recording and/or being offended?</comment></comment>


Just Write, Dammit - <AUTHOR> https://wedusc.com/jwd/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm trying a release-early, release-often project for a tool to facilitate writing (which is subtly different than a text editor).</comment>


Should I drop out of graduate school? - <AUTHOR> So I'm currently enroll in an MSc in Mechanical Engineering program at a University in the UAE. I'm on a scholarship program as a teaching assistant/graduate researcher. I just finished my first semester through which I suffered greatly but I ended up with a GPA of 3.75, if that even matters.
We are required to choose 3 research topics out of a list of proposed topics as our thesis topic and will be assigned to one of them. I have just been informed that all three of my choices have been given to more suitable candidates and I will have to choose another topic. The problem is all the other topics are of absolutely no interest to me, I can't see myself going through hell to do a thesis in a topic that I am not passionate or interested in. I don't want to waste my time for two years doing something that I hate and then graduating with a degree I have learned/benefited nothing from to start looking for a job from square 1. I would rather quit now and start looking for a job instead of wasting my time doing something that I hate for two years and then start looking for a job. Please keep in mind that to quit I would have to pay back the semester's fees and probably any stipend I have received during the semester which could add up to 35,000 USD and this amount increases with every semester I spend in grad school, so if I'm gonna quit it's gonna have to be now. I might be able to pay the 35,000 with the help of my family. But I would like to get some advice first and would like to know if quitting could possibly affect my job prospects and opportunities. what would you do if you were in my place? <comment><USER2> I would quit for sure.

There are plenty of details missing, but the bottom line is that you should have no doubts.

If I were paying $35,000 USD a semester and were not absolutely loving it and/or confident this was the best decision of my life.... I would quit.

Two years and $35,000 X 4 = $140,000 debt is A pretty serious opportunity costs to me.

Run.</comment>


Bitcoin-Only Economies - <AUTHOR> http://btcgeek.com/bitcoin-economies/ <comment><USER2> I don't think bitcoin will ever be used as an actual currency because of it's built-in deflation. Deflation promotes speculation and hoarding of money (coin), which is absolutely the opposite of what you want in a functioning economy. I don't see any of the deflationary coins ever gaining traction as an actual currency, capable of supporting a market. On the other hand, the bitcoin protocol may prove to be useful in the future, and a more mature version of it very well may usurp the existing monetary system. I do believe we're a ways out from that at this point in time.

I think bitcoin, as a currency will fail eventually, but that the protocol itself and the encryption methods will evolve. The benefits of being distributed and efficient are too great to be ignored, but there's a lot of revision to be had.</comment>


The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce (1983) - <AUTHOR> https://web.stanford.edu/class/e145/2007_fall/materials/noyce.html <comment><USER2> This is a good companion to read after Crystal Fire [1] that covers the discovery of the transistor and the backgrounds of Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley in a similar fashion. I had hoped that book would cover Noyce, but it did not, and this article fills that void nicely.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Crystal-Fire-Transistor- Information-T...](https://www.amazon.com/Crystal-Fire-Transistor-Information- Technology/dp/0393318516)</comment>


The Firing Squad Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~eroberts/courses/soco/projects/2004-05/automata-theory/problem.html <comment><USER2> Feynman discusses this problem in his "Theory of Computation" book. If I remember correctly, its actually part of a joke he plays on the reader too. In one of the earlier chapters he brings up the problem and then assigns it to the reader as homework they should complete before moving on. I spent maybe a week or two on that problem, discussed it with coworkers... and we came up with nothing.

So I gave up and continued reading. Then somewhere in the 4th or 5th Chapter he says something like: Oh I hope you had fun with the Firing Squad Problem, I still work on it from time to time and hope to come up with a solution myself one day.

Facepalm.

Edit: Here is a link to the book, its enjoyable for experts and laymen alike. [http://www.amazon.com/Feynman-Lectures-On-Computation- Richar...](http://www.amazon.com/Feynman-Lectures-On-Computation- Richard/dp/0738202967/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391792191&sr=8-1&keywords=theory+of+computation+feynman)

<comment><USER3> When you keep presenting a supposedly unsolvable problem to people who don't know it, then you might get lucky. George Dantzig was one such person. He arrived late to class, saw some problems on the board, assumed they were homework, and solved them. He wasn't constrained by the common thought that these were "unsolvable".

<comment><USER4> They were not "unsolvable", they were simply not solved yet (at the time Dantzig saw them on the blackboard).

[http://www.snopes.com/college/homework/unsolvable.asp](http://www.snopes.com/college/homework/unsolvable.asp)

<comment><USER5> Did you read the comment? He said they were considered unsolvable at the time, not that they were unsolvable. Of course they're solvable - they were solved.

<comment><USER4> That is precisely my point. They were not considered "unsolvable" (i.e. impossible to solve), they were considered "unsolved" (i.e. not solved yet) and were presented as such. Do you really need me to explain distinctions in meaning here?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is one of those problems where the illustration is severely misleading from the intended theoretical problem. The problem assumes that all nodes share a synchronized time step, but do not have a clock, and only communicate by trading notes, which is an incredibly awkward assumption. The problem works better without the title and metaphor.

For example, a much better metaphor would be schoolchildren passing notes among neighbors every time the teacher turns their back, coordinating a simultaneous outburst.

<comment><AUTHOR> In Hillis' book the clock is provided by a military drummer beating time on a drum.

<comment><USER7> That's an unfortunate metaphor; it completely spoils the problem. Just have the _drummer_ give the signal to fire, and all the soldiers will hear him simultaneously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A few years ago, a friend asked me if I had any interesting problems he and a coworker of his could work on for fun. One of the problems I gave him was this (although I presented it as a state machine problem, not a firing square problem).

In a burst of over-enthusiasm, I also quickly hacked together a simple state machine simulator that he and his coworker could use to test their proposed solution(s).

The problem specification, state machine simulator, and documentation are available here: [https://github.com/tzs/problems-state-machine- sync](https://github.com/tzs/problems-state-machine-sync)

I told them I would consider it solved if they could describe the algorithm. They did not need to actually specify fully working state machines that dealt with all the details.

Much to my surprise, especially considering that my friend had not studied computer science beyond what was given in a high school programming class, not only did they solve the problem in a few days, they produced fully working state machines.

Another puzzle I gave them consisted of several images that show the tracks of a bicycle. One of the wheels is leaving a red track and one a blue track (color assignment was random for each image). Their task: determine in each image whether the bike was traveling left to right or right to left. Here are the images: [http://imgur.com/a/hv0b0](http://imgur.com/a/hv0b0)

It was also randomly determined for each image whether to draw the front wheel track first or rear wheel track first, so you cannot deduce anything from which track appears to be on top when they cross.

<comment><USER9> Ok. I'm stumped. Could you give me a hint

<comment><USER8> If you want a hint for the firing squad, start out by limiting the number of participants to powers of two, and think recursively.

If you want a hint for the bicycle problem, think about tangents.

<comment><USER10> Anyone who drives a bycicle knows that the rear wheel follows a smooth path compared to the front wheel. So this image is easy. I guess there might be more tricky images. A straight line for instance ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is an interesting theory problem, but it might be clearer to talk about shooters at a firing range, separated by partitions such that they can each only talk to their neighbors. The barriers eliminates the trivial solution of the shout: "Fire on the count of 3!" that common sense would provide.

The simplest solution would be to establish a clock, because with a clock you can say "Fire at 1pm exactly!". But even this is interesting because it requires shooters to know where they are in the line in order to take into account any signal propogation delay. If each person takes 1s to repeat a message that they hear, then it takes n seconds to go down the line, and each shooter must know how to compensate for that delay. E.g. the first shooter hears "it's noon", the next shooter hears "it's noon" but knows that he's 1s away from the source, and can calculate that the time is actually 12:01, the next shooter knows it's 12:02 etc. They could synchronize clocks, specify a time "shoot at 1pm!" and get the job done.

But what if we take away their clocks? This is where my intuition fails me, because I don't see how the problem can be solved without clocks. If you don't have clocks, you need to somehow get a signal to every shooter simultaneously, which I think is theoretically impossible, since without a clock the shooter cannot execute instructions on their own.

Which probably means I don't fully understand the scenario :)

<comment><USER12> I think the purpose is to solve the scenario where each node has a perfect internal clock, but no external reference clock. A rough solution is to initiate a count from the origin, starting from 0. Each node hears the previous neighbor's count, increments it by 1 and sounds off. When the end node is reached, it knows how far the signal propagated. At this point a reverse count is initiated, terminating in 0 at the origin. Each node along the way back hears the adjacent node begin its countdown, and starts its own countdown from its relative position. The return signal reaches the origin node just as the remainder of the nodes reach 0, and all node execute simultaneously on 0 (with appropriate modification for any fencepost problems).

No external reference clock is required, and assuming each node counts at exactly the same rate, all nodes act in unison.

<comment><USER13> the problem is with no clocks, and is possible.

you also can't count the soldiers because you don't have unlimited memory (states), so you might run out of memory (states) to count in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > At every count, each soldier looks at their neighbors, considers what they > themselves were already doing, and decides what to do next, completely > according to what they see.

Anyone else think this is an incredibly ugly problem statement? It's like they thought firing squads were cool and tried to shoehorn the problem into it any way they could.

<comment><USER13> Feynman gave the firing squad problem in his lectures on computation, so it can't be a modern shoehorn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Its interesting to see people get stuck on the "Firing Squad" aspect of it. There is an insight there about communicating through metaphor effectively.

As a synchronization problem this one was a lot of fun, I too encountered it in the Feynman book and later used variants of it in interviewing folks for Google. Basically once you get into the realm of distribution the ability to get large groups of programs working together introduces a lot of complexity into an otherwise straightforward problem space.

An interesting variant is that you create a line of students. The teacher asks them to form a line at the door with the tallest student in front and the shortest in the back. How can any given student know its there turn to join the line at the door?

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm assuming that when it says a "fixed number of states," it means that the number of states can't be tied to the number of soldiers in the line? (e.g., a five state solution would have to work for any number of soliders)

<comment><USER16> Realized my question may have come across as rhetorical, but I really am looking for clarification on the rules!

<comment><USER17> Yes you have a constant number of states at your disposal. Otherwise, there is a trivial solution that takes _n_ or so time, matching the theoretical lower bound (imposed by the "speed of light" for information propagation in this kind of automaton), rendering the problem thoroughly uninteresting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I came here hoping to encounter a rousing debate on why we should use the firing squad for all executions, but this is much more interesting.

<comment><USER19> That does say something about how political HN has become.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is a nice one to solve for yourself. The two-dimensional (and higher) problems are still research material.

<comment><USER8> I assume that it is research material if you are trying to find the solution with the minimal number of states or the fastest sync time or something like that?

The two (or higher) dimensional problem if you aren't requiring some kind of optimal or minimal solution is a trivial extension of the one dimensional problem. E.g., for two dimensions, you essentially do the one dimensional solution along the top row to sync up all the elements there, and then they simultaneously start the one dimensional solution on the columns.

<comment><USER20> Yes, I was talking about solutions with special properties, like eg being optimal or minimal in some sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Turn on a light above the target's head. Shoot on target. Demote general for wasting everyone time.

<comment><USER22> Then the person who is the closest to the light will know that he is the one who killed the individual.

<comment><USER23> No, the way firing squads work is that a randomly-chosen member fires a blank. No one can know for certain if they delivered a lethal round.

<comment><USER24> While you may not know if your rifle _has_ a blank, you'll definitely know if your rifle _fired_ a blank due to the different force in recoil because you're accelerating the mass of gunpowder+lead vs gunpowder alone.

<comment><USER23> Not sure how true that is. How much recoil force is contributed by the bullet versus the gas that propels it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It would a appear a visual cue by the target would be superior... propagates to all soldiers at the speed of light, assuming normal rifles (range etc), all soldiers are likely to receive the signal at what for practical purposes are the same time -- the signal might be created by way of a mirror reflecting on the wall, so doesn't require any special technology, and can be projected almost instantaneously ... sadly such a practical solution makes for very a trivial fsm...

<comment><USER26> For n large enough, this visual based solution would not suffice. Light based communication is the fastest on the universe but not instantaneous.

Imagine there exists a line of soldiers, 96 million miles long,...

-Or-

Imagine there exist n datacenters which need to coordinate an action with nanosecond accuracy and are connected by fiber optic cable...

<comment><USER27> I think one of the interesting aspects of the problem is that it illustrates just how much more complicated a mechanism needs to be if you aren't allowed to introduce some basic functionality like clock synchronization.

We know the automata have clocks, so if they're actually allowed to count cycles to keep a concept of synchronized time, then the problem becomes very simple: a counter is started at 0 and sent from one end of the line to the other. When it reaches the other end of the line, the last node knows how long before the signal can get back to the beginning of the line and sends 2 __n back across as the time everyone will fire. Super simple solution in 2 __n time.

That's not to say it's a stupid problem -- it's both fun and useful to consider what exactly you'd need to do if you had to solve a problem with the given constraints, because it helps you understand the cost of those constraints and whether all the extra algorithm complexity is worth it. Not to mention that if you're just going to punk out and say you'll use synchronized clocks, then you've got a whole new set of issues. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is a bit distracting to place a theoretical problem in an unnecessarily morbid context. We don't have to be dark to be cool. How about a "cheerleader coordination problem" or the "Sing Happy Birthday problem"?

<comment><USER28> That's a decent concern troll. I give you 6 out of 10.

<comment><USER29> Definitely at least an 8/10\. Look at all the replies.

<comment><USER28> HN is too easy a target.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Independent App developers – do you own an Android device and iPhone? - <AUTHOR> Probably a dumb question, but I'm just getting started in app development and wondering how to properly test things. I own an iPhone but don't have an Android device in my house. And even if I got one, there are so MANY different types out there...<p>How do you properly test an app if you can't afford to own a hundred devices? Simulate & pray? <comment><USER2> I only develop for iOS)</comment>


People with beards are less likely to have disease carrying bacteria - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35350886 <comment><USER2> >So what's going on? The researchers suggested that shaving might cause micro- abrasions in the skin "which may support bacterial colonisation and proliferation".

The obvious next step would be to take samples from people who don't need to shave. (Women for example.)</comment>


Working as a librarian gave me PTSD symptoms - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-oliver-librarian-the-public-movie-20190419-story.html <comment><USER2> The kind of people who are giving the author PTSD aren't going to be helped by free housing, free money, or free anything other than free medical care, and in the extreme cases, institutionalization.

Since we find the idea of involuntarily committing psychiatric patients to be unpalatable these days, we have to either way until they commit a serious crime and go to prison, or live with them on our streets and in our libraries.

There are many homeless people who are not socially problematic, but that's not what this article is about. The problem people are incompatible with free housing, because they are violently unstable. They're schizophrenic, drug- dependent, or just plain violent.

All these responses about economic considerations or a lack of homeless support infrastructure are totally missing the real issue, which is that some people have such extreme mental illness or other social problem that they are incompatible with peaceful society, and it's not something than can be solved with housing and cash. That is a separate problem entirely.

<comment><USER3> _> Since we find the idea of involuntarily committing psychiatric patients to be unpalatable these days_

We closed the asylums, because the long-term detention of the mentally ill is costly and inhumane. We can do better than just warehousing people in pseudo- prisons. We completely failed to provide adequate support in the community for people with severe and enduring mental illness, which is why so many people are trapped in a cycle of homelessness and incarceration.

Most of these people _aren 't_ "incompatible with peaceful society", they just need help and can't get it. If any one factor is to blame, it's the systematic defunding of social work and community mental health. If your local library is full of mentally ill homeless people, the fundamental questions are _why do these people have nowhere else to go?_ and _why is nobody here who actually has the training to help these people?_.

<comment><USER4> > _Most of these people aren 't "incompatible with peaceful society", they > just need help and can't get it_

Do you have any source that most of these people can't get it? With a father who outright refused any medical help unless basically forced on him, in a country where it's completely free, I can absolutely relate to the argument that not having involuntary psychatric treatment plays a big part here. And his mental state was only a minor part of his health issues.

It's not nice to be in stationary psychatric treatment. These are horrible places you want to leave as soon as possible. But it sometimes can't be helped.

I can even relate to the point that it's better for (some/most of) these people to live on the streets than in a psychatric facility, while it's probably worse for society as a whole.

<comment><USER3> There's a world of difference between "having access to medical care" and "having access to appropriate care for a disorder that presents particular obstacles in accessing conventional care pathways". Access to care in the US is highly inconsistent, because there's a patchwork of providers and funders.

Effective care for people with severe and enduring mental illness needs to be patient-led but assertive - we're not going to lock you up unless it's genuinely in your best interests, but we're not going to let you slip through the cracks either. Compulsory inpatient treatment is a necessary last resort where people pose a clear and immediate risk, but it should not be the basis of care for severe and enduring mental illness.

The issues regarding involuntary treatment in the US are highly complex, but the evidence indicates that involuntary community treatment does not make a significant difference in clinical outcomes. Forcing people to attend appointments or take medication doesn't seem to result in any long-term benefit on aggregate. Some people do benefit (at least in the short term) from being treated against their will, but compulsion undermines the relationship of trust between care providers and service users and discourages people from engaging with care.

[https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/8...](https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/8182.pdf)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assertive_community_treatment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assertive_community_treatment)

[https://www.cochrane.org/CD004408/SCHIZ_compulsory- community...](https://www.cochrane.org/CD004408/SCHIZ_compulsory-community- and-involuntary-outpatient-treatment-people-severe-mental-disorders)

<comment><USER5> > significant difference in clinical outcomes

But by removing these peiple from the streets nd the libraries, even if they are not cured themselves, we avoid a librarian -- a productive member of society -- from developing PTSD.

<comment><USER6> My (controversial?) opinion is that the civil commitment laws aren't good enough. A (mentally ill) person shouldn't have to become a danger to others or themselves before a serious conversation about involuntary commitment can be had.

And I acknowledge and fully accept that this is a very rough position to hold today. But, it is born out of over a decade of direct personal experience. It's come from watching the state of California continually fail to provide adequate support to my clinically diagnosed family member, to our family as people who care about this person, as well as failing to protect to public from him time and time again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The problem with how we treat the poorest people in the country is that we have a fair number of completely psychotic people who spoil the whole social support network for everyone else by requiring 100x the help everyone else does because they are actively destroying the facilities and people that try to help them.

In Western Europe these people are likely held against their will in mental institutions, but in America, especially in San Francisco we'd rather they be out walking around off their meds if they haven't murdered anyone yet. There are homeless people who regularly randomly assault people for no reason and as long as they don't use a weapon they are back out on the street in 24 hours.

<comment><USER8> > especially in San Francisco we'd rather they be out walking around

It's not a question of preference. Our constitution is incompatible with treatment programs that involve indefinite imprisonment when the individual is not a serious threat to himself or others.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Connor_v._Donaldson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Connor_v._Donaldson)

2\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addington_v._Texas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addington_v._Texas)

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure if laws in Western Europe are fundamentally different. In the Netherlands the law[1][2] states you can only be involuntarily committed if you're a danger for themselves or others and if this is the only remaining solution. It seems roughly analogous to those two SCOTUS cases, although details and/or practical implementations may differ.

[1]: [https://www.ggznederland.nl/themas/gedwongen- civiel](https://www.ggznederland.nl/themas/gedwongen-civiel)

[2]: [https://www.dwangindezorg.nl/rechten/wetten/wet- bopz](https://www.dwangindezorg.nl/rechten/wetten/wet-bopz)

<comment><USER10> Any other refs on how the Netherlands deals with homeless? I am shocked by how few homeless there are.

<comment><USER9> I think it's far more involved than just "dealing with the homeless". After I moved to the UK a few years ago (from NL) was shocked by the amount of homeless people.

After renting for two years I was evicted with a 2-month notice for what was essentially a simple disagreement with the landlord. They didn't even attempt to resolve it: they just evicted me.

It took me over half a year to get half of my £1 100 deposit back; they initially tried to charge me £1 400, mostly for bullshit general maintenance and/or lying about either the initial state – even though it was unambiguously stated in the original inventory – or agreements we had made about the checkout condition (I asked if I had to fix a few minor issues, they said no, and then charged me anyway). About £100 was reasonable, the rest wasn't.

My point here is, all of this would be highly illegal in the Netherlands. You can't just evict people because you feel like it, and you can't just send a bill well over a month later for all sorts of items (or maybe you can, but it's certainly not common[1]). It's not hard to imagine how I could have ended up homeless if I had been more vulnerable – for example by actually _needing_ that £1 100 deposit for a new deposit, or suffering from depression or other mental illness, etc.

I think homelessness is a complex problem, and dealing with people _after_ they become homeless is a only a part of it. This is not very scientific, but in general, I've observed that homelessness is correlated with the amount of empathy in a society, which is something that affects many laws and attitudes.

[1]: A little footnote: technically also not legal in the UK, but they interpret "notify about deductions within 10 days" as "send standard form letter that there may be some deductions within 10 days", which is obviously not the same. But ... what can you do about stuff like this as a tenant, right? I might have considered the small claims court, but have since left the UK as I was fed up. Even "notify within 10 days" is already very strange, as this means they have all the time to collect all the evidence, while robbing me the chance of actually giving any sort of counter-argument. In NL, it's always been arranged at the checkout, with both parties present.

<comment><USER11> > After renting for two years I was evicted with a 2-month notice for what was > essentially a simple disagreement with the landlord. They didn't even > attempt to resolve it: they just evicted me.

Were you actually evicted, or did your lease simply expire without an option to renew? Because even here in the US, it's very hard to impossible to evict someone who has a lease and is still paying rent and isn't flagrantly violating laws or destroying the dwelling.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure if "evict" is the correct legal terminology; probably isn't. But it is what it effectively amounts to, so it's what I'll call it.

Details: [https://www.gov.uk/tenancy-agreements-a-guide-for- landlords/...](https://www.gov.uk/tenancy-agreements-a-guide-for- landlords/ending-a-tenancy) – tl;dr is that after 6 months you can just end the tenancy agreement with a 2 month notice.

Assured shorthold tenancies are pretty much the standard; you don't have a lot of choice. Either sign a contract like this, or don't have a house to live in :-/

The entire thing is seriously fucked up if you ask me, because at the slightest hint of being "difficult" (e.g. because you demand they actually fix things, or because you object when they act like assholes) you just get evicted :-/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Speaking as 1) the son of a divorced mother on multiple antipsychotic drugs beginning in her mid-30s for schizophrenia, involuntarily hospitalized multiple times, who routinely discarded her medications as soon as she was discharged because of the terrible side effects, and 2) a retired physician (neurosurgical anesthesiologist x 38 years) who rotated through ERs and psychiatric wards during medical school and residency, then was occasionally paged to the ER to deal with critical airway issues/Code Blues in patients with psychiatric histories: people with major mental health problems are quite often prescribed medicines whose side effects are so crippling and difficult to live with, they'd rather do without. This is the root cause IMHO of much social vexation for the rest of the population. In addition, some homeless people, offered safe shelter and food in a controlled, supervised setting, refuse, fearing loss of freedom or worse. I see no solution that doesn't infringe on their rights as human beings.

<comment><USER13> Maybe psychiatry interns should spend a month taking antipsychotics, just to experience the side effects. It would greatly reduce their faith in big pharma.

<comment><USER14> It's not just the side effects, it's also that antipsychotics don't really target the "negative" symptoms of schizophrenia such as anhedonia and avolition, which can be just as destructive to the prospect of a stable and fulfilling life as delusions and hallucinations.

<comment><USER12> You're spot-on. The hammer-type drugs/aka antipsychotics dull down everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The US seems to be coming to the realization that social welfare is not an altruistic indulgence, but a necessity for an economically wealthy society.

These library "residents" force the state - and its workers - to help them by confronting them with their sheer humanity. It is easy to refuse services to people you don't know, it's harder to send them out into the cold face to face. Most Human beings can't stand seeing another Human suffering. It just hurts us. Hurting them, by removing them forcibly, also hurts us.

<comment><USER16> Whats the solution? Throw another billion at the problem?

Have 80% of it get sucked up by the bureaucracy? And the other 20% is used on surface issues.

>social welfare is not an altruistic indulgence

Both sides want to help people, the great question is, what is the best way?

Should we spend 1B on bandaids? Or should we start earlier in life, giving people opportunities that keep them off the streets?

<comment><USER15> That's exactly the kind of "self-reliancy" and "small government" BS that hasn't worked for the US the past 100 years. Well, it has worked for a small minority which has increasingly enriched itself.

If you promote "giving people opportunities that keep them off the streets" as a solution, you profess to a total ignorance of how homelessness in the US (and most developed countries) works.

It's not poverty or lack of employment. It's more about mental health and substance abuse. You can offer those people all the jobs you want, without medical and psychological/social help, they don't stand a chance.

So yes, "1B on bandaids", like better mental health care for the poor, more social workers, more social housing would be a very good start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This quite touched me, I love libraries and when I traveled through the NA I often went in every big city to take some time from all the travel madness. The contrast between the libraries in Toronto and Seattle was quite stark. You could see the diffence between visitors, and there were a ton more homeless people in Seattle.

At the time i didn't think much of it, but I was reflecting back on it after a awesome episode of 99% invisible (palaces of the people). The guest talked about how libraries changed and have a different function. And the importance of something he called social infrastructure as something that doesn't get seen as important as let's say, roads and electricity.

It's Very related to what the author of the article is saying. We don't nearly appreciate enough how libraries function in society. When we keep looking at as a buildings where you can get books and use the internet we totally miss the human side of it and if we don't equip the people with the skills or experience to deal with it. They are going to be burned out.

Hopefully we can recognize the importance libraries have and support them in a way it benefits whole cities.

</comment><comment><USER18> There have been, and continue to be, social experiments proving that giving homeless people a house ends up being less expensive to communities and way more humane.

Maybe it's lack of understanding. Maybe lack of knowledge. Maybe selfishness. But it's doable, more efficient and decent.

<comment><USER19> It's the idea that making someone else's life too easy is somehow immoral, especially if they obtain something valuable without the hard work.

<comment><USER20> You can always make their life easier by giving them YOUR money. Heck, you could even adopt them and house them in your own home. I would respect that. But I don't want one cent of my money to go to these kind of programs, and I think that my stand on this issue should be respected.

<comment><USER21> >I think that my stand on this issue should be respected.

But I don't think it's remotely worthy of respect. You want to live in a society like that, go somewhere with no public schools or roads or firefighters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The last place TempleOS's Terry A Davis did a video before he died was outside a library.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH41gGBVpkE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH41gGBVpkE)

"I really like this library. So uh, come here use their computer and smoke out here. They must have been freaking out because such an impure person was in their presence."

</comment><comment><USER23> >>Money for low-income housing and social service programs has dwindled for decades.

This is not true. Money for low-income housing and social services has massively increased over the last 40 years.

The problem is, this approach is not working. The state psychiatric hospitals were closed because of the deinstitutionalization movement which was strongly supported by advocates of the mentally ill.

Now they don't want to acknowledge the consequences of that advocacy, and keep blaming the phantom menace of austerity and social spending cuts.

</comment><comment><USER24> My wife started working at a downtown library 6 months ago. We live in a relatively small Midwest city (300K pop) that is a big college town, as well as the seat of the state government. Everything in this article is familiar to me; nothing is shocking in any way. This is the norm for urban libraries.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is HN, home to some of the smartest problem solving minds. Is there a startup opportunity to make a dent in solving homelessness while also making a profit or is that wishful thinking?

<comment><USER26> I don't care for the idea that HN or programmers or engineers or doctors or NASA or _any_ particular subset is home to "the smartest problem solving minds". I've met smart and creative problem solvers in all fields.

People tend to solve problems with the tools of their field, and it's telling that your first idea was "a startup opportunity". Really? Our solution for homelessness should also make a profit? We're going to bring our neighbors out of poverty by earning a buck in the process? Where does this money come from?

First, start by "doing things that don't scale": solve homelessness for one person. Then do it for 2, 5, and 10. My impression is that, like many human problems, a real solution might never scale.

<comment><USER25> "Our solution for homelessness should also make a profit?"

Profits are merely an incentive to getting more individuals involved and VC capital backing is unlikely unless there is an eventual ROI I'd imagine. How that ROI is determined is beyond the point, it could be government subsidies, cryptocurrency/blockchain related, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Having been lucky enough to grow up in Western Europe, in a "socialist" democracy, I've read a lot about the state of poverty in the US and been shocked by visits to San Francisco and Washington to see so many homeless people. I'd thought that seeing a street full or homeless people literally one block over from the Whitehouse was the most shocking thing - it is inconceivable in Western Europe that homelessness would be tolerated near a national monument.

But reading this, the idea that libraries are doubling as homeless shelters is the most shocking thing I think I've ever encountered about poverty in the US.

Sorry to provoke anyone from the US reading this but how badly does your society have to be broken to allow this to become an accepted norm? Given it's an extremely wealthy country, the cruelty of the system that lets this happen is hard for me to even imagine.

This whole "survival of the fittest is what makes America great" crap needs to stop. Period. Because to me that seems like that's the root cause, the excuse for treating a societies weakest so cruelly. The only discussion should be "how do we fix this?".

OK rant over ... apologies to anyone triggered but genuinely shocked.

<comment><USER28> The homeless problems in America have absolutely nothing to do with "survival of the fittest" and your comment is nothing but stereotypes. US cities spend massive amounts of money on social issues and the US is in fact the world leader in terms of donations as a percentage of GDP.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_charitabl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_charitable_donation)

The homeless problem is mostly attributable to laws in the 70s and 80s which released mentally ill patients from hospitals and prevented their future incarceration.

<comment><USER29> The US also spends a lot of money on healthcare, but it doesn't really work, because the model is flawed.

<comment><USER28> Yes well that means that the system is broken, _not_ that Americans have some sort of "too bad, the weak should die" mentality (as the OP suggested.)

<comment><USER30> The "too bad, the weak should die" mentality is, unfortunately, very much the impression I get whenever discussing healthcare with Americans. It's easy (availability heuristic) to forget this says more about the sort of Americans who are likely to engage in discussion about healthcare than about Americans as a whole.

<comment><USER31> The main thing I've noticed, as someone who works at a company too small to have cheap insurance and is too well off to get subsidized insurance, is that people who work for big companies genuinely don't think health insurance is a problem in America because their employer is able to get bulk plans where they are paying something like $100 a month out of pocket for absolutely amazing coverage.

Then you have the people who used to have great coverage, but it's slowly gotten less good and more expensive over time. They are mainly worried about doing something that will make the problem even worse.

Then you have people like me, who are paying ridiculous money for what is basically "catastrophic" insurance, and like to complain loudly any chance we get, mostly on deaf ears because people hope the problem won't come their way if they just ignore it and carry on.

<comment><USER30> Interesting perspective, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why is nobody in this thread mentioning the the 800lb gorilla in the room?? That is, in a capitalist system the homeless, mentally-ill, "problematic", disturbed, troubled, etc are simply considered useless and frankly purposefully pushed to the edge with the hope that they will simply...die. That is the fundamental truth in any capitalist society - you either deliver value or you perish. Who will pay for these people to be housed, treated, re- integrated, educated, fed, etc in times of largely non-existent real economic growth, where almost 80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck? [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/09/shutdown-highlights- that-4-i...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/09/shutdown-highlights- that-4-in-5-us-workers-live-paycheck-to-paycheck.html)

The answer is, of course, nobody. For all the talk about caring for the homeless and in general those who are at the bottom of society, the sad/brutal reality is that society as a whole does not want these people around. So, they keep getting squeezed and in turn keep squeezing the few who are willing to help them or at least listen to their woes. That is what is giving the author PTSD, not interacting with mentally ill every day. Namely, the realization that a sizeable minority of the US population are simply considered junk and are purposefully pushed towards death. But she only saw part of the story. The scarier truth is that almost 80% of Americans (all those people living paycheck to paycheck) are only one job loss or chronic illness away from the same faith. More than 2/3 or all banckrupcies are related to medical bills.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/this-is-the-real-reason- most...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/this-is-the-real-reason-most- americans-file-for-bankruptcy.html)

And when you add to the above that empathy in general has declined by almost 50% over the last 2 decades you'd have to be a psychopath not to start getting PTSD symptoms or at the very least a very serious case of clinical anxiety disorder or even psychosis.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/psychology/comments/bedj96/the_end_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/psychology/comments/bedj96/the_end_of_empathy_young_people_measure_40_less/)

Just think about this for a second. If most people around you do not give a rat's *ss about you even when you are doing OK, what happens if you meet with bad luck and go downhill?? Anxiety, depression, bipolar, psychosis, suicide, etc - all of these can be explained rather easily by the simple reality that most people live in terror every day to be surrounded by people they do not care about and those do not care in return.

</comment><comment><USER16> My only gripe about this story, is that they act like Public Libraries are the only places that have crazy people.

Working in retail making 7.85$/hr, we had plenty of crazy people.

There is something noble about being a librarian, and this article discusses that phenomenon.

There was nothing noble about serving enraged customers, customers that stole, or creepy customers.

</comment><comment><USER33> If I follow a twin-ideology and the world falls to ashes, at what point does that love affair fall apart? Does it ever? There are people in Venezuela who support true socialism even right now. That such comfortable dualism might result in such horrific results, almost as if both had a wrong concept of human nature.

<comment><USER16> We can have conversations about the free market fixing these problems.

I have money, lets talk about what can be done to solve it.

No one gives a care that socialism fails, the problems still exists, and as a result, people will keep trying to solve problems.</comment></comment>


Eight big problems with the "case" against Assange - <AUTHOR> http://markcrispinmiller.com/2011/02/eight-big-problems-with-the-case-against-assange-must-read-by-naomi-wolf/ <comment><USER2> Wow - compelling points here, hard to refute.</comment>


To be creative, Chinese philosophy teaches us to abandon 'originality' - <AUTHOR> https://psyche.co/ideas/to-be-creative-chinese-philosophy-teaches-us-to-abandon-originality <comment><USER2> A very similar trend shows up in poetry fairly often across many cultures.

Adherence to a strict form, like a sonnet, breeds creativity because of the constraint. (a little known fact is that e.e. cummings wrote more than a few very good ones)

Much earlier in time, scops and skalds -- the epic oral poets of anglo-saxon and norse cultures -- were renowned not so much for their ability to come up with new things as such, but by how cunningly they could weave together stock phrases and allusions to speak to the current moment.

Parallels to the midrashic traditions should be fairly obvious.

You see it in greek epic poetry too: the opening invocation of _The Odyssey_ ends with "tell the old story / for our modern times".

<comment><USER3> > _A very similar trend shows up in poetry fairly often across many cultures. > Adherence to a strict form, like a sonnet, breeds creativity because of the > constraint._

Its hacking equivalent is demoscene and hand-tuned assembly.

<comment><USER4> Good analogy thank you

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _The wheelwright responds that, at least concerning his craft, he can create > what he does only because he's developed a 'knack' for it that can't be > wholly conveyed in words._

This parable sounds like it's less concerned with creativity and more with tacit knowledge.

[https://commoncog.com/blog/tacit-knowledge-is-a-real- thing/](https://commoncog.com/blog/tacit-knowledge-is-a-real-thing/)

<comment><USER6> That's what I got out of Tao Te Ching as well - knowledge being dangerous because many consume it without the ability to use it. Tacit knowledge is important vs the abundance of "ability to search google for facts or information" and never do anything more than posture with it.

<comment><USER7> The way that the Laozi (Daodejing) and the Zhuangzi discuss knowledge is subtly different. The Laozi is secretly a very political text and has to be read in the context of other philosophies which emerged around the same time. These philosophies, including what was later called "Confucianism," argued that a virtuous ruler cultivates himself and, in doing so, transmits his virtue on down to his subjects. The Laozi, on the other hand, argues that a good ruler keeps his people poor and stupid (to totally butcher it, something along the lines of "they'll be happy if they don't know what they're missing out on"). In the Laozi, knowledge is dangerous _for the people_ but not for the ruler.

In the Zhuangzi, knowledge is often discussed in terms of the interconnectedness of all things. The story cited in the OP is one example of several anecdotes which describe a skilled craftsman who is instinctively good at what he does but is unable to describe what he's doing in a formulaic manner. (Again, note the contrast to the "Confucian" texts which are very prescriptive about self-cultivation - in other words, they're all about following precise formulae.)

For background, I have undergrad/graduate degrees in Chinese Literature focusing mostly on ancient/early medieval texts.

<comment><USER8> >The Laozi, on the other hand, argues that a good ruler keeps his people poor and stupid

This is a bit different from my understanding of Daodejing. Do you know which chapter? I quickly checked the original text and only the 65th chapter mentioned along the lines "commoners shouldn't be taught to be cunning instead of honesty, otherwise difficult to rule" <excuse crappy translation>

<comment><USER7> Off the top of my head, Chapter 80 is a good example of the "idealized state." (I do think some things are often lost in translation; many of the freely available translations on the internet tend to read into the Laozi what they "think" it means.) There are a bunch of other references too though. It's also worth remembering that these are composite texts - there was no "single" author so if things occasionally seem self-contradictory, that's pretty natural.

<comment><USER8> That's absolutely true. From the fact that there were so many equally ancient text commenting and interpreting the the original text (later also become canonical sources), it could be contradicting itself too. My views were basically formed via my background and what commonly understood in my upbringing.

<comment><USER7> Yes, for sure. It's also the case that our understanding of ancient texts has changed a lot over the past 20-30 years as more archaeological finds have been discovered (e.g. Mawangdui). I once had a Professor who tried to discourage me from focusing so much on ancient literature because he joked that all my research would be out of date in 20 years :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This point of view is not especially Chinese. It's very common for all cultures.

Chinese, Indian and European art traditions used to flavor integration. You learn to copy the masters. After you master the earlier techniques you are ready to contribute something new to the whole.

Originality for the sake of originality is very modern concept. Modern art takes this into extreme. Artists are trashing around desperately and are doing random things to be original. We end up with works that generate momentary 'heh' moments when the artist is especially clever.

<comment><USER10> Are you suggesting that the banana-taped-to-a-wall[0] wasn't a seminal work in the evolution of fruit art?

[0][https://www.cnn.com/style/article/banana-artwork-eaten- scli-...](https://www.cnn.com/style/article/banana-artwork-eaten-scli- intl/index.html)

<comment><USER11> Ha ha, has been raising eyebrows for a while already, this moment [0] is hilarious, although the whole clip is a classic from the '70s.

[0] [https://youtu.be/OfsJAgaY62E?t=546](https://youtu.be/OfsJAgaY62E?t=546)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I was in Art School, the instructors there stressed that it was wrong, or rather, misguided, to infuse your beginner work with a "Style." Style should come from the inside out, not the outside in.

In other words, learn your craft and the way you express it will be individual to you. There is no need to create a "style" for your work. I think this relates to the topic!

<comment><USER13> Somehow this strikes me as pay-your-dues elitism. I agree the fundamentals of color and form are essential. And perhaps some basic technique. But ultimately the sooner and more free people are to experiment then I believe the more variety society will gain.

Having studied only a few semesters of art at university I realized it wasn't for me. Still, I appreciate that the instructors weren't dogmatic about the craft. They let me explore it from a digital first perspective in the early oughts.

<comment><USER14> All the art teacher and professionals I interacted with encouraged experimentation but also stressed to not skip the fundamentals.

The problem is that especially beginners are quick to jump to saying it is their "style" when being critiqued even tough what they were doing wasn't intentional or isn't perceived as intentional.

E.g it is easy to play an instrument off-beat, and every now and then it will sound really good by accident. But playing off-beat intentionally, consistently in a appealing fashion in different contexts takes a ton of practice.

But there is also the other extreme. The founder of FZD, a concept art school in Singapore mentioned in one of his videos that he is worried that a lot of young students are way too focused on learning fundamentals and doing tedious muscle memory drills found on Youtube instead of drawing just for fun for hours and hours, experimenting, making mistakes and correcting them.

So I think it is about finding a balance between honing your technique and knowledge and applying your current skill level in different creative ways, that will eventually result in your own style and the development of your style over time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sensationalist title made to appeal to stereotypes. None of the source material mentions either "originality" or "creativity".

> In this short vignette, a wheelwright known as Pian (扁) tells a duke that > the book of sages' advice he's reading is nothing but 'chaff and dregs'. > Angered, the duke demands an explanation. The wheelwright responds that, at > least concerning his craft, he can create what he does only because he's > developed a 'knack' for it that can't be wholly conveyed in words. If the > blows of his mallet are too gentle, his chisel slides and won't take hold. > If they're too hard, it bites in and won't budge.

The above excerpt makes no mention of originality, and a normal person would just read it as promoting practical experience over theory.

This is just the author trying to push her own opinions onto some ancient works, with nobody able to call her out for it because the source materials are in a language the audience can't understand.

<comment><USER16> The article completely falls apart because the only link that the author has between crafting wheels and creativity is done in the following paragraph which is so vague that it can be applied to anything and nothing at all.

> a spontaneous integration between contrasting types such as the hard and the > soft, as well as the learned and the spontaneous, the active and the > passive, and even the unproductive and the productive – all of which apply > in the case of carving wheels, as well as elsewhere. In other words, living > well involves creativity.

Even if we examine the story in more depth, it _still_ doesn't make any sense; incredibly strong propositions such as the one below are thrown out all over the place.

> his craft in an integrated manner that can't be fully captured through an > algorithmic list of instructions

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is an interesting idea. The two people who come to my mind are Bob Dylan and Pablo Picasso, both of whom are considered the "top" of their fields, but neither of which could be considered especially original.

Dylan initially rose to fame by rewriting old folk songs and gospel hymns, emulating a lot of Beat poetry (Kerouac/Ginsburg), and then doing a similar thing across genres like rock and blues. Picasso also famously drifted between styles. "Lesser artists borrow; great artists steal".

<comment><USER18> Shakespeare also. He lifted almost all his plots from other sources.

<comment><USER19> he may have lifted his plots, but Shakespeare created 1700+ of modern english words [0]

Shakespeare can definitely be considered "original".

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare's_influence#Influe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare's_influence#Influence_on_the_English_language)

<comment><USER20> Just to add some dimension to that observation (but not diminish it) at least some of those words are better described as "credited as first used" rather than invented. He did invent many words, however, and I think more impressive is the number of phrases which he invented and are now so commonplace you don't think you're quoting shakespeare. Some examples:

As luck would have it; Break the ice; Fair play; In a pickle; It's greek to me; What's done is done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> That's an interesting perspective and a valuable way of looking at things. I'll have to consider that deeper.

I'm not sure I would call it "creativity," though. I'll have to think about that, too.

<comment><USER22> I certainly wouldn't call it creativity. Making wheels and dealing with grief are craftsmanship. There's nothing wrong with craftsmanship, but genuine originality is rarer.

This shouldn't be controversial, because it's the difference between making good wheels and inventing the idea of the wheel in the first place.

<comment><USER23> Craftsmanship gets a bad rap in the arts, and is widely considered to be somehow "lesser" than "True Art".

The work of craftsmen is often denigrated as being unoriginal and indistinguishable, but quite often a craftsman's work bears the distinctive stamp of its creator, and when you look closely you can tell one craftsman's work from another.

Craftspeople also do innovate in technique and coming up with new motifs. The line between craft and art is blurry, and there are good arguments to be made for craft to be considered art.

I am reminded also of the snobbish attitude some people have towards genre fiction and genre films. Work made in a genre is often seen as somehow lesser or not worthy compared to "serious" film and fiction. However, again and again genre films and fiction come out which are widely considered to be masterpieces. I'm thinking of, say, Kubrick's work in science fiction and horror ( _2001_ and _The Shining_ ), Philip K Dick's science fiction, and Lovecraft's horror. Many of their works are now considered masterpieces despite working in what were once considered to be backwater genres.

What is considered to be art has also radically changed over the millennia. Many things now considered to be high art (like, say, Duchamp's _Fountain_ [1]) are considered masterpieces of art that broke new ground, but at the same time it could be argued that it's not art at all, and in fact any work of a craftsperson has more of a claim to the term "art" than something like Duchamp's _Fountain_ , which wasn't even made by Duchamp, and is a mere industrial product. But can industrial products be art? Apparently they can, if they're placed in to a gallery and looked at in a certain way.

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_\(Duchamp\))

<comment><USER24> Abstract art is about representing something invisible in a culture. It's like comedy--the joke only lands if it resonates with some unspoken, often even unrealized, but shared experience. And abstract artists, like comedians, keep hammering on very similar themes, even if their output is superficially diverse throughout their career. IOW, they're like craftsmen who become increasingly, intimately familiar with some shape or form, the ways it can be manipulated, and (to the extent they're interested) reintegrated into the culture.

There's much more craftsmanship (e.g. the cultivation of tacit knowledge) in abstract art than meets the eye. Relative to the entire process, the substantive novelity, such it is, is so miniscule that I would hesitate to say that it's greater than what can be found in the more mundane crafts, at least when comparing people of similar intensity, intelligence, and devotion. And often the reverse may be true, as the constraints in working on well-trodden ground can be challenging and inspiring. That's my $0.02. ;)

TL;DR: I agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> To sum up in a few words: "You had to be there." Or, "nuance that can only be felt, not explained" Similar to other comments, I wouldn't say this is a call to abandon originality, but rather illuminates a different aspect of creators and what goes into what they make.

<comment><USER26> In a word (that I recently learned myself), haecceity

<comment><USER27> Thanks, I'll be busting this one out in casual conversation from now on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _" Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about."_ \-- W.H. Auden

</comment><comment><USER28> This characteristic of Chinese culture, IMO, serves to understand why the whole Intellectual Property debacle has been so contentious.

As I see it this is the main point behind the USA-China "trade war"

I think the USA only defends IP because of the economic implications. I think the Chinese have the better idea regarding "IP".

But I have no doubt that were the roles reversed (China "owns" most IP and USA just manufactures it) the Chinese government would be staunchly defending IP.

<comment><USER29> It's entirely economic. The US didn't care about IP when it was starting out.

<comment><USER30> Um source? The US Patent Law was enacted in 1790.

<comment><USER31> "The city of Lowell, Massachusetts actually got its start after its namesake, Francis Cabot Lowell, visited England in the early 19th century and spent his time trying to figure out how the Brits had managed to automate the process of weaving cloth. Charming his way into factories, he memorized what he saw, and managed to reproduce the weaving machine.

Hamilton didn't just send Americans to Britain in search of the secrets of the industrial revolution. He used patents to lure immigrants with skills and knowledge to move to the United States. George Parkinson, for example, was awarded a patent in 1791 for a textile spinning machine, which was really just a rip-off of a machine he had used in England. The United States also paid his family's expenses to emigrate and re-locate to the US."

[https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2018/07/30/ip_thef...](https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2018/07/30/ip_theft_is_what_once_helped_make_america_great_103367.html)

Edit: The history of hollywood is also fitting: [https://penntoday.upenn.edu/2012-05-10/research/bumpy- histor...](https://penntoday.upenn.edu/2012-05-10/research/bumpy-history- hollywood-and-copyright-law)

<comment><USER30> Thank you. Good point!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I have a good friend I know this would certainly apply to. However, if I just send him the link it will come across as criticism. I'll have to stealthily slip it into conversations over time.

Sort of like changing culture at a company. It won't work by firing off links to everyone - at least where I work. Will need to sneak it into converations.

</comment><comment><USER33> What rubbish is that. Instead of writing 12,000 words can I simply say there are at least 3 Zhuangzi In his inner and using the fake Zhuangzi not written by him is not credible.

For the idea this is more traditional and no need to quote him as he might not agree. Let us say the first book is about totally free from anything and above everything. Conform, constraint ... the whole message is about free from everything.

It is comment inside the book that a guy which can freely fly away to anywhere is not good enough as he still need to wait for the wind.

And if ignore whether it z or not, the problem of just copying and stealing without a culture nurture individuality is the harm to humanity by chinese culture. Not contribution. Not something one should model and sell to the wider public.

We need individuality and original idea. Not another copy or ...

Evolve and beyond, no constraint and free.

</comment><comment><USER34> This was an interesting article. It sometimes pays to leverage an old experience and integrate it into a present one.

The article below talks about a similar concept albeit from a business perspective [https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/originality-is- not-t...](https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/originality-is-not-the-only- way-it)

</comment><comment><USER35> Counter-intuitively, only once you master something can you develop a style. Up until that point, whatever "style" you have is too unfocused and random. Once you hone your craft, your style will also be refined.

</comment><comment><USER36> You have to learn the rules in order to properly break them.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is a core point of Hegelian dialectic, too.

</comment><comment><USER38> > _To be creative, Chinese philosophy teaches us to abandon 'originality'_

Ant/Bee philosophy.

</comment><comment><USER39> bounce that ball my little drones [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PtX8BNLn_c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PtX8BNLn_c)

</comment><comment><USER40> The desire to be original is a form of self-censorship.</comment>


Thebroken – Kevin Rose (2003) - <AUTHOR> https://archive.org/details/thebroken_xvid

<comment><USER2> Simpler and far less pretentious times. At least more innocent and without so much noise. Kevin Rose may be considered controversial by many but still his contribution must be acknowledged. The style seems ridiculous now but used to be in a weird way cool.

</comment><comment><USER3> Brokenfan, you the man! This is awesome stuff.</comment>